An Anatomy of Illness

Abstract

Because it focuses primarily on the sick body (disease), medicine ignores many of the concerns and needs of sick people. By listening to the stories of patients in the clinic, on the Internet, and in published book form, health care providers could gain a better understanding of the impact of disease on the person (illness), what it means to patients over and above their physical symptoms and what they might require over and above surgery or chemotherapy. Only by familiarizing themselves with the entire emotional landscape of illness, which includes fear, anger, shame, guilt, and above all loneliness, can the healthy--medicine as well as society in general--hope to heal in a comprehensive manner.

Alignment of Concerns: A Design Rationale for Patient Participation in eHealth

“…It can affect one's whole life, one's relationships with others, and how one sees oneself [24]. Patients suffer because their illness constrains their agency and because it creates anxiety and fear, but they also suffer because "they feel isolated from others, because they feel alone" [6] . The physician, in contrast, is trained to "see" the patient's illness within a prescribed conceptual framework (the biomedical model of medicine), as a typical example of a disease.…”

Nursing student as patient: experiential learning in a hospital simulation to improve empathy of nursing students

“…These students do not yet have any background in fully understanding the situation of the patient. Being a patient is a radical shift in perspective: “from the normal vertical to the dreaded horizontal” . “Illness is about learning to live without control” according to Arthur Frank in his book The Wounded Storyteller .…”

Challenges facing online research: Experiences from research concerning cyber-victimisation of people with disabilities

“…Upon further search on the use of the word spoonie -and its derivatives-in social media, it appeared to be used widely by users to refer to disability and chronic illness (Miserandino, 2003). While upon searching in research databases very few results hardly mention The Spoon Theory, such using it as an example of internet activism (Dingwall-Jones, 2014) or to discuss the need to understand the illness experience (Biro, 2012;Jackson, 2013). In a published dissertation, disabled participants brought The Spoon Theory in their narratives to communicate and express themselves (Miller, 2015), which was encountered during this study too.…”